Platinum Prices Down, Silver And Gold – New Highs

Many See Precious Metals As A Great Investment

Last year demand for precious metals has been steadily increasing. For platinum, although this was not as good, given, the metal had the weakest trend since 2006, Bloomberg writes. The combination of continuous production in South Africa and a third year of stagnation has limited application in advance of the price of platinum at 20% this year, 24% below the 2008 record performance. By comparison, palladium was appreciated by 68%, 58% silver and gold by 27 percent.

Investors are increasingly turning their attention to precious metals while the Fed injected another 600 billion dollars into the financial system and buy more debt securities to help the American economy. Platinum, however, does not benefit from this situation as much as its “sisters” sale because the offer still exceeds demand for the third consecutive year, according to information provided by GFMS, a London research company.

“Platinum is the weakest performer,” says Brian Hicks, the U.S. Global Investors in San Antonio. “Platinum can be used in industry, like palladium, palladium market is smaller, however. Also, platinum is not the kind of metal that continue to attract inflows of funds, such as gold and silver in this period of uncertainty.”

Hicks bought the platinum and gold sold in the third quarter. “We decided that we would prefer to hold more assets into gold than platinum because we fear a slowdown in growth of the economy,” he said.

Of growing speculation that the economic incentives will fuel inflation, appeared at a time when the world economy is recovering from the deepest recession since the Second World War, pushed investors opt for precious metals. Thus, they bought 16,406 tons of gold, silver, platinum and palladium this year, according to Bloomberg. Of the total extracted 25,030 tons this year, investors took 65%, leaving less material than usual jewelers, manufacturers of glass and car manufacturers.

Prices for platinum for immediate delivery fell by $ 11, or 0.6% to $ 1,757.5 an ounce. The gold price has depreciated by 0.2% earlier this week after reaching a record high level of $ 1,398.6 an ounce. Silver has also lost 0.4%, to $ 26.6488 an ounce. The only one who has seen a positive trend was palladium, with an advance of 0.6% to $ 690.75.

Not the same for gold or silver

The evolution of precious metals this year was better than the company shares or bonds, as investors sought shelter as to make possible economic and financial problems.

The last impulse on the precious metal market was given by the U.S. Federal Reserve, which decided to inject an additional $ 600 billion in the American economy.Gold was also intended by World Bank President as a reference standard for world’s markets, which helped gold price reach the psychological threshold of $ 1.400 an ounce.

The dollar has depreciated immediately, involving a new wave of price rises of raw materials. “In this context, silver, gold’s smaller cousin, is increasingly becoming a viable alternative for investors”, as economists at IG Index have pointed out, commenting the advance of the gray metal, which has progressed to $ 26.90 per ounce, an unprecedented price since March 1980.11